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How Jerry Brown Became ‘Governor Moonbeam’

SAN FRANCISCO — On Tuesday, when Jerry Brown — California’s once and would-be-future leader — declared he was running to win back his old job, he brought with him more than questions about his age (71) and his record of political service (40 years and counting).

He brought Moonbeam with him, too.

For the uninitiated, ‘Governor Moonbeam’ became Mr. Brown’s intractable sobriquet, dating back to his days as governor between 1975 and 1983, when his state led the nation in pretty much everything — its economy, environmental awareness and, yes, class-A eccentrics.

The nickname was coined by Mike Royko, the famed Chicago columnist, who in 1976 said that Mr. Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote,” which in Chicago political parlance meant young, idealistic and nontraditional.

The term had a nice California feel, and Mr. Royko eventually began applying it when he wrote about the Golden State’s young, idealistic and nontraditional chief executive. He found endless amusement — and sometimes outright agita — in California’s oddities, calling the state “the world’s largest outdoor mental asylum.”

“If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he noted in April 1979, “it probably comes from California.”

But as any New Age Californian can tell you, such hate is probably cover for a deeper love. And so it was with Mr. Royko, who after many vicious gibes at Mr. Brown’s expense offered an outright apology to the governor, and spent years trying to erase the moniker.

In a 1991 column in The Chicago Tribune, he called the label, an “idiotic, damn-fool, meaningless, throw-away line,” and pleaded with people to stop using it.

It didn’t take. Mr. Royko died in 1997, and when Mr. Brown declared his candidacy last week, most, if not all, press accounts referred to his “Moonbeam” past. (This reporter included.) When The Sacramento Bee asked readers for potential slogans for the 2010 Brown campaign, one reader quipped: “From Moonbeam to Aspercreme.” (Suggesting that Mr. Brown, who would be the state’s oldest governor, is, like many of us, a little less limber than he once was. This reporter included.)

Photo

OWN DRUMMER Jerry Brown, when he was young, idealistic and nontraditional.Credit
Jeffrey Scales/HSP Archive

For his part, Mr. Brown said it was initially flattering for a bigwig like Mr. Royko to write about him. “But obviously there’s a bit of frustration to have that moniker floating around for 30 years,” he said.

Exactly when Mr. Royko first crowned Mr. Brown “Governor Moonbeam” is unclear. Mr. Royko said he didn’t even remember when he first landed on the phrase. He “was stringing some words together one evening to earn his day’s pay,” he wrote.

But the nickname accompanied Governor Brown as he declared his fascination with outer space, proposed that California launch its own space satellite and made headlines dating the rock star Linda Ronstadt.

The nickname became a whipping stick for Mr. Royko. And he flailed away as Mr. Brown was trying to convince fellow Democrats that he’d be a good presidential candidate. (His 1980 campaign slogan was “protect the earth, serve the people and explore the universe.”)

“I long ago gave up trying to figure out what Gov. Moonbeam stands for or believes in,” Mr. Royko wrote in April 1979, “besides getting his pretty mug on TV and confusing people into voting for him.” He added that Mr. Brown was an “intellectual hustler,” who “can jabber so nimbly that no one can figure what he’s talking about.”

All of which made Mr. Royko’s epiphany even more striking. It came in 1980, at the Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Royko said that the best speech had come from — you guessed it — Governor Moonbeam.

“I have to admit I gave him that unhappy label,” Mr. Royko wrote. “Because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.”

Nicknames, like politics, can often be childish, but awfully sticky, too. California Republicans have already taken to bringing up Mr. Brown’s Moonbeam past, suggesting in a recent news release that “his unpredictable nature” makes him unsuitable for the governorship.

Mr. Brown — not surprisingly — sees it differently, saying the nickname shows he’s “creative and not hidebound to the status quo.”

“Moonbeam also stands for not being the insider,” said Mr. Brown. “But standing apart and marching to my own drummer. And I’ve done that.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2010, on page WK5 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Governor Moonbeam’ Recalled. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe